During operation of a conventional physical camera situated in or around dynamically moving objects, a camera operator will look at a view screen or through a view finder, to understand their camera framing. However, the camera operators often also need to look around the camera or rely upon their other senses to provide situational awareness of the dynamically moving objects.
There are situations such as the operation of remote cameras or cameras operating in virtual or simulated environments, where camera operators are not themselves immersed in or even present in or around the scene. As a consequence, the operator's situational awareness is limited to the view provided by the camera itself. This limited situational awareness often negatively impacts on the quality of the resultant video capture.
In a mostly static scene and without the need for camera movement, being limited to just the immediate camera view is often sufficient. However, when operating around dynamically moving objects, the operator needs to be able to predict and respond to movements of potential objects. A good example of an environment with dynamically moving object is a sports field.
On a sports field, camera operators need to be aware of players approaching from outside of their cameras field of view. For example, a player on the sports field might run immediately in front of the camera position, ruining the aesthetics of a current shot.
On a sports field, camera operators also need to be aware of the impact of their own movement around the scene without turning their camera to look, since turning their camera to look conflicts with their need to achieve good framing on the target objects. For example, the camera operators might unintentionally move a virtual camera backwards through the position of a player on the sports field, ruining the aesthetics of the current shot.
Virtual camera operation in a first-person perspective gaming environment may seem superficially similar to the above sports field example in that the game player is effectively driving a camera through a virtual environment and the camera operator certainly requires situational awareness. However, the game player is free to jerk their camera about and look around as much as the game player likes. Such movements, in fact, may be felt to be an inherent aspect of the game experience.
One method for providing virtual camera operator situational awareness has been to provide a “mini map”. The mini map is a small map, centred on the camera (and/or game player) with graphical indications of the surrounding scene to show adjacent players and structures. The main limitation of the mini map method is the valuable display screen real estate that the mini map consumes. Further limitations are that the mini map can be distracting from the camera operator core function of capturing the best camera framing of events, and that mini maps provide no sense of the roving three dimensional (3d) context in which a virtual camera operator is required to perform.
Another method for providing virtual camera operator situational awareness is to overlay proximity indicators on the side of the view screen or view finder. Simple proximity information is insufficient to allow a camera operator to perform high quality shot planning, as the proximity information lacks any substantial predictive capability. A further limitation is that simple proximity indicators provide no sense of the roving 3d context in which a virtual camera virtual camera operator is required to perform.
There is a need to provide a means for overcoming limitations of the above methods, which provides situational awareness to a virtual camera operator.